Short-term collateralized debt, such as demand deposits and money market instruments - private money, is efficient if agents are willing to lend without producing costly information about the collateral backing the debt. When the economy relies on such informationally-insensitive debt, firms...

To end a financial crisis, the central bank is to lend freely, against good collateral, at a high rate, according to Bagehot's Rule. We argue that in theory and in practice there is a missing ingredient to Bagehot's Rule: secrecy. Re-creating confidence requires that the central bank lend in...

Short-term collateralized debt, such as demand deposits and money market instruments - private money, is efficient if agents are willing to lend without producing costly information about the collateral backing the debt. When the economy relies on such informationally-insensitive debt, firms...